Sonny Maupin Helps Bob Anderson Channel Sinatra at the Palazzo Theatre in Las Vegas
There is no shortage of singing impersonators in Las Vegas, of course. But for FRANK The Man, The Music, which opened at the Palazzo Theatre in Las Vegas on Jan. 24, 2015, Bob Anderson is carefully made up to resemble Frank Sinatra in his later years, and the veteran singing impressionist also channels the nuances of voice and mannerisms for Sinatra, who died in 1998, to eerie perfection.
Anderson, who has been drawing his own crowds mimicking the singing voices of Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Tom Jones, among others for more than 40 years, was a younger contemporary of those artists back in the day, and most of them dropped in on his act and gave him the thumbs-up.
The Palazzo Theatre also happens to be built on the site of the Sands Hotel’s Copa Room showroom, where the legendary Rat Pack formed as the first Oceans 11 was being filmed in 1960. As “Old Blue Eyes,” Anderson cracks wise about “Old Red Eyes” (Dean Martin) and “Old Brown Eye” (Sammy Davis Jr.), and he also pays homage to the composers, arrangers and band members of the era.
The candlelit VIP tables between the showroom’s first row and the stage also evoke the old Copa Room from the days when Sinatra would perform along with Bennett, Bobby Darin, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole.
Positive reviews have helped the show’s prospects, which must be encouraging to Anderson, who had been working to bring the show to fruition over a two-year span as a way to keep the memory of Sinatra alive and introduce his music to a new generation of fans.
“He was the greatest saloon singer who ever lived,” Anderson says, as he’s being fitted with silicone makeup on his brow, which gets tamped down with adhesives near his temples and just above his eyelids so that he more closely resembles Sinatra on stage.
If a wax figure from Madame Tussauds Las Vegas at the adjacent Venetian could magically come to life, move around, banter and sing like Sinatra, it might not be that different from what Anderson has been able to achieve since FRANK The Man, The Music began its run.
Fortunately, the same isn’t required to bring Sinatra’s pianist and music director — Vincent Falcone — and many of the other musicians who performed with Sinatra back in the day back to the stage. More than a dozen of the band members, Anderson notes, have performed with Sinatra himself. And Falcone, who leads the production’s 31-piece orchestra as Anderson sings “My Way,” “New York” and “That’s Life,” was Sinatra’s pianist and music director for a 10-year span. “It’s a great band,” Anderson says. “It really swings.”
An Authentic Replica
While Las Vegas’ take on things like Medieval castles, Sphinxes and the Statue of Liberty often take a few, well, liberties, this show, Anderson notes, is all about “authenticity, not caricature.”
Its claim of being the “most authentic re-enactment of a Frank Sinatra concert ever performed on the live stage” is backed up at every turn. Even the musician’s charts are “the original arrangements from Sinatra’s orchestra,” notes Sonny Maupin of Las Vegas-based New World Audio, who is overseeing all of the production’s complex audio requirements.
“I want to stress the fact that this is 100 percent live music; no tracks,” adds Maupin, a keyboard player and percussionist. “As a musician myself, that means a lot to me, and I think the audiences appreciate that also.”
Anderson and the production team first turned to Maupin for a one-off showcase previewing FRANK The Man, The Music in 2014 at the neighboring Venetian’s showroom. Maupin credits Anderson, Falcone and the musicians for “an incredible job — I’m honored that I’m involved in this production.”
Maupin, who also mixes the well-known local band Sante Fe and the Fat City Horns at the Palms on Monday nights, looks after the production at the Palazzo for its Tuesday-through-Saturday night shows, and notes the challenges of optimizing the listening experience throughout the 1,700-seat space.
“Live audio is always full of challenges and compromises, and having a 31-piece orchestra with over 50 mics on stage certainly presents challenges. It has resulted in a massive amount of adjustments and fine-tuning. There are just a lot of factors involved, with the main one being the room.”
A Challenging Space
The older showrooms like the original Copa at the Sands “were smaller, had lower ceilings, and far less cubic volume of air in the room, so the acoustical energy from the orchestra on the stage was proportionally much higher in those rooms and did not require nearly as much amplification,” Maupin says. “The newer showrooms, such as the one we are in now, are pretty much the complete opposite — far more acoustical output is required from the PA to achieve a comparable level,” he explains, noting the L-C-R configuration of the P.A. speakers are “flown maybe 75 or 80 feet in the air” within the venue, which has a ceiling height of close to 100 feet.
While the older showrooms typically sat no more than 800 to 900 guests, with 30-foot ceilings and acoustic treatments throughout, the Palazzo Theatre seats close to 1,700. And if the high ceiling gives the space a “wow” factor, it also adds cavernous-sounding reflections from ducts, sheetrock and other reflective surfaces above the grid, despite acoustic treatments in the zero-to-60-foot zone.
“There’s nothing to keep sound from bouncing around all over the place up there and reflecting back down into the room,” Maupin says. “This may not be as big of an issue with a loud rock or pop act, but with a 31-piece orchestra, it’s a far more delicate issue to deal with, while trying to keep the acoustical instruments sounding like acoustical instruments with all the natural dynamics and natural character.”
Even the lighting system in the room turned out to have audible complications, Maupin notes. “There are moving lights directly over the orchestra, and the cumulative noise from the fans in all those lights ends up in all the orchestra mics,” he says. “There are over 50 open mics on stage, so if nothing is going on, it sounds like there’s pink noise turned on in the P.A.”
The FOH Setup
Maupin’s job, of course, is to optimize the listening experience for the audience despite those hurdles. “Live sound is all about challenges and compromises, and you have to make whatever adjustments are necessary to hopefully keep everything sounding musical and as natural as possible,” he notes.
At the Palazzo Theatre, he tackles the EQ challenges with a house-supplied Yamaha PM5D. There are 49 channels of inputs from the stage, along with some additional inputs for playback of a voiceover at the beginning of the show and some rain and thunder effects accompanying one song.
A house-supplied XTA system handles EQ and other processing, and there’s some DSP available via the Crown amps driving the house speakers.
“My preference is keeping things as simple as possible, with the least amount of processing or equalization,” because with too many tweaks, “you end up with more issues to deal with,” Maupin says. At the same time, some EQ’ing is almost always needed. “There’s no way around it in most situations.”
The P.A. setup starts with L-R arrays of JBL VerTec speakers, eight per side, with each array also including two JBL VerTec subwoofers. There’s also a center cluster of eight L-Acoustics dV-DOSC above the stage, and six more JBL VerTec subs under the stage. Six Meyer Sound UPJunior speakers serve those seated at the candle-lit VIP tables as front-fills.
The show’s retro theme does not lend itself to a sleek, clean stage with boy band headsets or hot fuchsia in-ear monitors, of course.
“This is all old-school as far as that sort of thing goes — just regular floor wedges and side fills,” Maupin notes, with two pairs of Meyer Sound CQ-1 and CQ-2 for side fills and a half-dozen unapologetically clunky-looking Clair 12AM stage monitors.
Hardwired Mics
The combination of the total amplification requirements dictated by the large, reverberant space and the need for stage monitors adds to the risk of feedback, Maupin notes. But for this show, “it’s all about keeping it authentic,” and that includes the hard-wired Shure SM58 mic Bob Anderson uses for vocals, along with a Shure KSM44A he uses in a scene depicting a recording session.
“We tried a few different mics, but ultimately, a Shure SM58 ended up working the best for Bob’s voice in this room with this specific P.A.,” Maupin says.
Only one of the microphones used for the production, in fact, is wireless — when Anderson, as Sinatra, dons raincoat and fedora, and sings, “Here’s That Rainy Day.”
For that scene, a headset or lavalier proved impractical. Instead, there’s a Countryman E6 earset mic — but not worn in the usual way. “It’s kind of rigged to that raincoat so that we could get it up a bit closer to his face,” Maupin says. “For that song, it wouldn’t have worked for Bob to have to put on the headset, deal with the pack, and put on the raincoat.”
The song is the only one Anderson sings where RF interference could possibly be an issue, and that’s only happened on one occasion, Maupin notes. “One of the house techs told us afterwards that over in the Sands convention center, next door, that there were something like 200 wireless systems in use.”
Helping Maupin prevent that from recurring is a Palazzo house tech who keeps a handle on all the wireless frequencies used in the showrooms in the area.
Orchestra Mics
Maupin notes that the showroom had an inventory of various mics, including Anderson’s wired Shure SM58 and other used for the drums, percussion and saxophones.
“I recommended DPA mics for the strings, and Shure Beta 98 clip-on mics for the trumpets and trombones,” Maupin says. “The production went with those recommendations as it eliminated the need for mic stands and gave us a far more consistent sound on those instruments.”
Falcone’s piano is equipped with two DPA 4099 instrument mics, as are the strings. Shure SM81 mics are used for the percussion overheads.
Other mics include AKG 414’s and 451 for drum overhead and high-hat, Sennheiser 421 and MK-2 for saxophones and harp, and Shure Beta 98s for timpani and toms. A selection of additional Shure mics — Beta 52 for kick drum and SM57s for snare and guitar amp — round out the mic list.
With those big monitor speakers and Anderson’s penchant for moving about the stage, the mic in the raincoat “can be a little touchy,” but the wired Shure SM48 for vocals and Shure KSM-44A used during the “studio session” scene are “usually not an issue,” Maupin says.
So will the production be able to keep going until Dec. 12, 2015, Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday? Ultimately ticket sales will determine whether that happens. But the show has already defied more than a few skeptics.
“It was originally slated for three months, and it’s gone so well they just extended it a few more months,” Maupin says. “The audiences seem to love the show. Bob gets a standing ovation every single night.”
